


On Freedom and Chlorine Gas

by thegoldhopeful



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Psycho Pass, Angst, Attempted Philosophical Discussion of Freedom, Bombs and Explosions, Detective Work, Getting Together, M/M, Minor Character Death, Miscommunication, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-20
Updated: 2016-07-20
Packaged: 2018-07-25 08:37:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7525891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegoldhopeful/pseuds/thegoldhopeful
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In 22<sup>nd</sup> century Japan, society is controlled by the benevolent Sybil System. It is able to remotely scan the mental state of any person, including their mental wellness and potential for criminal behaviour. </p>
<p>After a new enforcer joins his team half way through the case, Yaku Morisuke begins to question whether morality is a black and white as the Sybil would have him believe. He isn't left much time to contemplate as the Public Safety Bureau closes in on a destructive arsonist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On Freedom and Chlorine Gas

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hyperchroma (illizarov)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/illizarov/gifts).



> **All the chemical information in the fic is scientifically accurate, do not try to test it at home.**
> 
>  
> 
> I'm so glad I got my shit together in time to sign up for this exchange; I had a lot of fun doing this. Hyperchroma! All your prompts were really inspiring and I'm sad I couldn't write more of them. I hope you enjoy this fic!! 
> 
> Huge round of applause to the mods of the Haikyuu!! Summer Holidays Exchange for organizing such a complicated exchange and sorting out the technical difficulties. 
> 
> Thank you to [Linda](http://archiveofourown.org/users/mercuryandglass) for editing this and making it at the very least readable. 
> 
> Please, enjoy.

Name: Kuroo Tetsurou 

Age: 20 years 

Psycho Pass: Burgundy 

Crime Coefficient: 132.8

The report swirled around in Yaku Morisuke’s head as he tried to fall asleep, tossing and turning beneath his blue duvet. Eventually, he gave up on sleep and sat up, brushing off his blankets. Immediately, his interactive hologram unit burst into existence. It was firetruck red and in the shape of a cartoonish cat with an enormous head and yellow eyes. Morisuke squinted at it as it seemed to take a deep breath before speaking.

“Morisuke-sama! It is currently 12:03 am and you have work at 8:12 am!” it screeched in its absurdly pitched up voice. The volume was locked on ‘loud’ and the creature only had one brightness setting. It had come with the flat, and, as much as he’d tried, Morisuke had never been able to change its presets. 

“I know; I just can’t sleep,” he grunted at the holo, mostly to shut it up. 

It didn’t work. The holo continued, “Your psycho-pass is ocean blue. You should improve it with quality sleep, Morisuke-sama. Would you like to take sleeping medication?”

Morisuke considered this while the holo hovered eagerly in front of him. It couldn’t hurt, besides, tomorrow was a busy day, and he’d need to be on top of things. “Fine,” he told the holo.

It backflipped excitedly  through the air. “Excellent.”

He felt around for the medication dispenser beside the bed. There’s a quick rattle against the plastic wall, and he fished out two pills, swallowing them dry before laying back down. 

The holo bounced slowly up and down for a few seconds, waiting for another order, and then vanished into the dark room.

* * *

When Morisuke arrived at the MWPSB the next morning, Oikawa and Iwaizumi were already there. Iwaizumi, Morisuke’s fellow inspector, was a straightforward man with a tendency towards grumpiness and a perpetual frown that masked his inner kindness. Morisuke liked him and appreciated both his no-nonsense attitude and his ability to give credit where credit was due.

Oikawa was Iwaizumi’s former partner, an inspector turned enforcer whom Morisuke had replaced after his crime coefficient had crossed over into the latent criminal zone. When he’d first arrived, Morisuke had pitied Oikawa and felt incredibly weird giving a senior directions. Sure the enforcers were basically animals, dogs employed by the MWPSB to sniff out fellow delinquents, but Oikawa was a constant and uncomfortable reminder than all latent criminals had been normal people once. 

The weird tension (that Morisuke felt but Oikawa never seemed to acknowledge) had lasted for almost a month before Iwaizumi had taken Morisuke aside after one particularly awkward mission and said, in his gruff voice, “Don’t worry about Oikawa; we knew what we signed up up for when we joined. Do your duty, and he will do his.” Iwaizumi had left before Morisuke could reply, cutting off his many questions, first and foremost of which was why Iwaizumi had used a collective pronoun rather than a singular one. It took him another month to learn that Iwaizumi’s crime coefficient was creeping up as well despite the inspector’s best efforts to the contrary. He was facing the same fate as Oikawa, and he knew it. This only served to deepen his respect and admiration for his partner, something Morisuke could never quite extend to Oikawa. 

Where Iwaizumi was sincere and blunt, Oikawa was cavalier and unhelpful. Morisuke believed in, and valued, honesty over kindness, which was not to say that Oikawa was kind. He could be, and frequently was, absolutely vile. He also treated every conversation like a game of Jenga, picking statements apart and watching them fall for his own entertainment. However, when he was riled up enough, Oikawa became a terrifyingly earnest opponent and an excellent teammate, but he snapped back into his self centered brat persona as soon as the risk had been averted. Morisuke much prefered that version of the enforcer, but could never figure out why Oikawa hid it, and what made him reveal it. Even after a year and a half of working with him at the MWPSB, Oikawa was a complete enigma. 

“I just wanna go out and flirt with girls,” he was whining as Morisuke entered. Oikawa was draped artistically over his chair, his hair and shirt fashionably rumpled, fiddling with one of the many pieces of alien paraphernalia that littered his desk. 

Iwaizumi was ignoring him and frowning at his own computer screen. They all knew that Oikawa didn’t really want feminine attention in and of itself; he just wanted to see how much of it he could get. In some ways, he was the least surprising of the enforcers. 

“I don’t have time for this,” Iwaizumi said, more to his computer than to either Oikawa or Morisuke. He stabbed at the tablet a couple times and then restarted the entire system. Iwaizumi was neither kind nor patient with his technology. 

“Quit grumbling Iwa-chan,” Oikawa replied, disinterestedly tossing his alien figurine on top of the messy pile of other abandoned alien figurines hidden behind his computer and reaching over to snag a worn manga from the empty desk beside him. 

Morisuke ran a hand across the desk. It had until recently been covered with what could only be described as a mountain of garbage: crumpled candy wrappers, dusty video game consoles, and  outdated gravure magazines. Morisuke had always wondered how its occupant had gotten anything done at all with his tablet buried under years of stuff. Recently, however, one of the cleaners had reshuffled it into a semblance of organization, throwing out all the truly unsalvageable trash and stacking up everything else. It looked abandoned and lonely. 

The desk’s former occupant was one Terushima Yuuji, an enthusiastic enforcer who, while on a mission the previous week, had been trapped in an abandoned apartment building along with enough fireworks to destroy the larger part of the city. Thanks to, according to Oikawa, his own exceptional cunning, or, according to Iwaizumi, the superior effort of the whole team, only a few of the improvised bombs actually detonated and the city was left relatively unscathed. Terushima, on the other hand, was not. He’d sustained enough injuries to require, at best, an early retirement, and, at worst, an early death. The perp had also been in the building when the explosion had brought half an apartment building down on Terushima’s head, but all they’d been able to retrieve was a pile of crumbly ash and what could be human bone. It’s enough to leave the case open until they found more conclusive proof of the perp’s death. 

It also left the Public Security Bureau with a seat to fill and Iwaizumi and Morisuke with the, if not unpleasant, then certainly boring task of interviewing whichever latent criminal candidates the Sybil had found most suitable. 

Morisuke had never done it before. In fact, he’d never actually been inside the confinement facility at all, but, judging from Iwaizumi’s attitude towards the whole affair, it wouldn’t be good. 

“I hope you realize you’re coming too,” Iwaizumi told Oikawa, more tiredly than angrily.

“No I’m not,” Oikawa said easily, flipping through the comic book. This was a bad sign. The only person Oikawa actually took orders from was Iwaizumi, and, if he was refusing those, then they were all in for a rough day.

“Yes you are, and you can sit in the car outside for the whole meeting for all I care.”

“Iwa-chan! You wouldn’t!” Oikawa said with fake shock. “Think what the sun will do to my complexion.”

If Iwaizumi was going to reply, he was interrupted by Division 1’s second enforcer, Ushijima Wakatoshi. As soon as Ushijima entered the room, Oikawa kicked off from his desk, the wheels on his chair screeching across the linoleum floor until he crashed into Iwaizumi’s desk. There wasn’t enough force in the hit to dent the metal, but it knocked Iwaizumi back. He swore mildly and returned to his work. 

“Good morning,” Ushijima said. 

“Good morning,” Morisuke and Iwaizumi chorussed. Oikawa pointedly ignored the greeting. Another bad sign: Oikawa was in a bad mood.

Morisuke wouldn’t have dared to guess why, the enforcer’s moods mystified him at best, and Oikawa could go from an insightful and helpful team leader to an uncooperative brat at the turn of a dime. If he was being so overtly nasty to Ushijima, then they were in for the second. 

Ushijima furrowed his brow at Oikawa and said, “Oikawa is in a bad mood,” before taking his seat at his desk. Oikawa stuck his tongue out in Ushijima’s general direction.

Unlike the other three, his desk was absolutely pristine, the metal surface shiny and dust-free. Ushijima’s few books, all legal reference books and police handbooks aside from one grammar dictionary, were lined up neatly on his bookshelf. His one vanity was a seeming endless series of volleyball magazines that he kept hidden in a drawer. Morisuke liked the enforcer a lot, both for his honesty and his perfectly written reports. 

When he’d first arrived at the MWPSB, Morisuke had wondered why Ushijima was an enforcer at all. The man was diligent and honest to a fault, and he believed in the laws and the judgement of the Sybil System with a rigid conviction that none could sway. If anything, Ushijima was a model citizen. Then Morisuke had seen him at work. Because he believed so strongly in the truth of the Sybil, the enforcer was absolutely ruthless. After a year and a half of working with him and countless missions, Morisuke had never once seen Ushijima hesitation to fire his dominator, and he’d never once seen the man flinch before even the most gruesome of lethal exterminations. Ushijima was logical rather than moral and therefore didn’t see any value in morality at all. 

Morisuke had once asked him how he could shoot people, even the helpless victims of crimes the PSB was unable to prevent, without a moment of hesitation or regret. Ushijima had replied, “If mercy is illogical, I see no reason to indulge in it.”

At the time the blunt statement had scared Morisuke, who’d been unable to stop himself from wondering just what sort of harm the enforcer was capable of. He’d later realized Ushijima felt the same towards illogical cruelty, which was at least consistent. Ushijima was someone he could work with. 

Morisuke took his seat, stepping around Oikawa to do so, and woke up his computer. The four screens flickered to light quickly, the first showing the division’s task list. Morisuke clicked on the first item to enlarge it and scrolled through idly. After he’d been at the MWPSB long enough to easily read past the rigid and often useless format of the Sybil’s correspondence, it barely took up half his thoughts, and besides, he’d seen this case file before. 

“We’re still on the arsonist case?” He asked Iwaizumi.

“Yes,” the other inspector grumbled, “but only after we get a new enforcer. I don’t know why they don’t just reassign the whole thing. It’s not as if Division 3 is drowning in work.”

Division 3 was a sore spot for both Iwaizumi and Oikawa after a rivalry that predated Morisuke’s employment. As far as he could tell, the issue was that Division 3 had simultaneously all the good cases and significantly less work than Division 1. It was also the cause of Oikawa’s irrational feud with Ushijima, although Morisuke had yet to work out the reasons for that one. 

“It means the powers that be want us to grab a new enforcer quickly,” Iwaizumi continued. He’d managed to restart his computer and was toggling between the three enforcer profiles they’d been sent the day before.

Oikawa grunted in disgust. He’d levered his feet up onto Iwaizumi’s desk and was fanning his face with the book.

“Put your feet on the floor,” Ushijima said. 

“Shut up Ushiwaka,” Oikawa replied, shooting the other a poisonous look. 

“You’ll make the desk dirty-”

“The facility opens at ten,” Iwaizumi interrupted, “and our first interview begins then. I’m taking Oikawa, but Ushijima, you stay here. You can have the day off if you want.”

“Thank you,” Ushijima replied.

At the same time, Oikawa whined, “Don’t wanna.” 

Iwaizumi tapped a few buttons, and the printer behind him whirred into life. He noticed Morisuke’s confused expression and explained, “Internet and holo access is restricted in the containment facility, so if you want to write notes or cross reference the individual files then you have to do it by hand. Do you still have your physical badge?”

Morisuke nodded. Most identification was digital these days, but all inspectors were also issued with a badge and plastic identification card. His was shoved in the back of a desk draw, but Iwaizumi carried his around to every mission. 

“Good, bring that.” 

Oikawa rolled himself back over to his own desk and dug through the drawers, drawing out his own ID. He pulled his jacket on and fixed his hair, watching his reflection in Terushima’s darkened computer screens. 

“Before you leave, ask Tsukishima to forward the lab analysis of those explosives,” Morisuke told Ushijima, making a note on the document before donning his own coat. If they were to solve a case and train an enforcer, he and Iwaizumi were going to need to multitask. 

“Roger,” Ushijima said. 

As the car sped over the highway bridge out of the city, Morisuke took the time to look back on it. It’s glass and steel towers glittered in the morning sun, sparkling like a chest of diamonds. Between them he could see the red and white lights of cars shining through the shady streets. Tokyo in the 22nd century really was a gem. 

Oikawa saw him looking and said, “such a pity that we only get to see the worst half of it, huh Yakkun.”

Morisuke gritted his teeth at the nickname, aware Oikawa was trying to rile him. 

The enforcer continued, “Even though we’ve made our city so beautiful on the outside, the humans in it are just as filthy on the inside as ever. Murder, violence, theft, they all still happen, even if the Sibyl system tells us we’ve now got a perfect life.” His voice turned bitter on the last phrase, spitting out ‘perfect’ as if it were a poison. 

“Oikawa,” Iwaizumi said warningly.

Morisuke took a deep breath. He’d had this argument with Oikawa before. The Sibyl had improved the lives of millions of people, it had made the country self sufficient, removed the need for outside trade and thus outside conflict. It wasn’t the system’s fault that humans were fundamentally flawed beings who couldn’t appreciate the utopia they’d been given. At this, Oikawa would curl his lip and say, “an inspector could never understand,” before retreating into haughty silence and ignoring Morisuke for the next few days until Ushijima said something more unintentionally insulting than Morisuke could manage. 

Today, however, Morisuke was in no mood to indulge Oikawa’s complaints, and they finished the ride in silence. 

Morisuke wasn’t sure what he’d expected the facility to look like, but an enormous block of sugar wasn’t it. The complex was perfectly square and its white surface unstained by the elements. There were no windows in its facade, and only one door. The entrance was big, and the black metal door rolled up as Iwaizumi approached it. Morisuke realized, as they passed under the dark doorway, that it had been built to accommodate paddy wagons and armoured vehicles, not cars. 

Inside was a small parking lot, lit by florescent strips and a glass-walled lobby, bright in comparison with the dingy parking lot. 

Iwaizumi elbowed the car door open and stepped out, marching towards the lobby. Oikawa sidled after him, hands in his coat pockets, oozing authority and confidence despite the fact that he’d been an internee here once too. That left Morisuke to scramble out of the vehicle and snatch his bag of files out before it automatically locked (Oikawa’s memory was like a marble monument and Iwaizumi didn’t need to bring papers if Oikawa was around). 

In the lobby, the three officers flashed their badges as Iwaizumi tapped their information into the prison’s system. Oikawa was thoroughly searched. Their visit had been scheduled and there was no one else there, so the process was altogether faster than Morisuke had come to expect from the Sybil’s bureaucratic tendencies. He glanced at his comm watch. The holo screen sprang up obediently, but remained blank, its clock showing a pixelated error message rather than the time. 

A woman clothed in a white lab coat lead them through a maze of straight white corridors to an elevator. The interior had no floor selection panel or destination indicator, their escort simply scanned a card on an almost invisible scanner and the elevator started to descend. They seemed to go down for a long time. 

“Most of the facility is actually underground,” Iwaizumi murmured to Morisuke, “to prevent escapees.”

At this, Oikawa made a distasteful sound, but otherwise said nothing. Morisuke was left wondering why the enforcer found the notion of escape so displeasing, or perhaps it was the idea of confinement. 

The woman ushered them into a darkened room. Only the white of her lab coat was visible, glowing fuzzily in the low light. “This room contains a two way mirror,” she told them, voice brisk and uninterested, “you will be able to observe the subject without them knowing. There is also,” she indicated a tiny point of light that Morisuke realized was a peephole in a door, “an interview room. Once I raise the blind the subject will be able to hear you, so please finish your discussion before then.”

Morisuke squirmed uncomfortably at the way she said subject, no inflection whatsoever. She could have just as easily been talking about a chair, or an animal. 

Iwaizumi turned back to them. Morisuke heard his jacket rustling in the darkness. “Oikawa you come with me. Yaku you stay here, watch and learn. If there’s anything you need to say, send Oikawa a message.”

“I thought there was no net connection here,” Morisuke said, confused.

“The whole building operates under its own controlled system,” Oikawa replied from somewhere behind him, voice soft and indistinct, “It feels like you’re connected, even though you’re not.”

“Please proceed into the interviewing room,” the woman said, ignoring the conversation.

“Let’s have a look at him first,” Oikawa murmured, “before he knows we’re here.”

The woman cast a glance at Iwaizumi, who nodded once, and then flicked an invisible switch. A tinny whirr filled the room as a blind which had covered the majority of one wall, from waist height upwards, began to rise.

The same white light that had illuminated the lobby slowly filled the room, making Morisuke squint his eyes shut against the glare. When he opened them again he saw the two way mirror showed a white room, its walls as sterile and blank as the rest of the compound had been. Inside it was a table with a single chair in front of it. The view was cut by a thick stripe of black where the wall between the two walls connected with the glass. The interview room on the other side was almost a mirror image, except it contained two chairs, and a clock, cleverly placed so that the interviewee could not see it.

Both rooms were empty. 

As they watched, a door in the back of the first room opened and a couple of caretakers, dressed identically to the woman, ushered a young man into the room. He was dressed in loose papery hospital pants in a shade of very light blue that Morisuke always associated with dentists, and a shirt of the same fabric, tied down the back in a series of mismatched bows. His hair was black, and fell over his head in a series of floppy spikes and hung over his right eye, hiding his face from the officers. Despite that, Morisuke could tell he had a somewhat narrow face and a long nose. His mouth was set in a firm line.

He took a seat at the table, placing his hands on it, and Morisuke noticed for the first time that he was handcuffed. The metal reflected the bright lights in a dazzling sparkle but didn’t look out of place in the barren room. 

Oikawa advanced beside Morisuke, his face only inches away from the glass. His mouth was twisted into the hard smirk he wore when he solved cases. He tapped the glass gently, and the man’s face spun towards them in response to the noise. Morisuke was startled, and took an involuntary step back. The young man squinted, eyes darting back and forth across the mirror. It was clear he couldn’t see them. 

Oikawa’s smile grew. “He’s good,” he murmured just loud enough for Morisuke to hear.He strode over to Iwaizumi and clapped the inspector on the shoulder. They exchanged a glance. Iwaizumi raised a skeptical eyebrow and Oikawa responded with a toothy grin. 

As they entered the interview room, the young man’s head swung around to face them. He didn’t obviously move, but Morisuke could see him tense. On the other side of the glass Iwaizumi swung a plastic chair around to face the prisoner perhaps a bit more forcefully than necessary then sat comfortably on it, leaning back so he could regard the young man from under his lowered eyelids. Oikawa didn’t take the other chair, but stood just behind and to the left of the inspector, arms crossed over his chest. The regarded each other for a couple long minutes. 

Morisuke’s eye was caught by a motion on the prisoner’s side of the glass, he was jiggling his leg under the table, where the two officers couldn’t see it. He was anxious, but didn’t want them to know. Morisuke tapped this observation out to Oikawa, who read it, subtly shielding his comm bracelet with the loose edge of his jacket. 

Eyes glittering, Oikawa bent to whisper something inaudible into Iwaizumi’s ear. The air shifted. The interview began. 

“I am inspector Iwaizumi Hajime, and this is my partner, enforcer Oikawa Tooru. We are here to help you,” Iwaizumi said, leaning forward. 

On the other side of the glass, the inmate shifted slightly at the word ‘partner’ but otherwise made no reaction. “Don’t try to sell me that,” he said. His voice was rather lighter than Morisuke had expected, but it had a hard edge to it, like a sunrise on a very cold day.

Morisuke tried to catch his expression, but it was hidden behind his messy tuft of hair. 

“Well, it was worth a try,” Iwaizumi responded tiredly. 

Morisuke moved slightly, just in time to catch the man’s forehead wrinkling in confusion behind his bangs, but then the expression vanished. Morisuke bit his lip; the guy was barely keeping up with the conversation, but he was a decent faker. Someone without Morisuke’s experience wouldn’t have noticed it. No wonder Oikawa liked him.

“I’ll be straight with you,” Iwaizumi continued, placing his clasped hands on his table and peering through the glass, “the MWPSB needs a new man, and the Sybil System in its infinite wisdom has decided you’re the one for the job, so we’re here to convince you to take it.”

That wasn’t strictly true; Oikawa was the one who’d made the decision, but everyone liked to feel special. 

“What makes you think I’d want to work with the people who put me here?” the prisoner asked. His foot jiggling increased. 

Iwaizumi did not seem perturbed, and regarded the young man with the same degree of grumpy disinterest as he did everyone. “Choose your poison,” he shot back.

The prisoner hesitated a second too long before he replied, “I’ll die like this either way.” 

Iwaizumi didn’t twitch when Oikawa brushed smoothly past him. The enforcer leaned against the table and bent forward and down so his face was almost pressed against the glass, never taking his hands out of his pockets. The prisoner unconsciously slid away from him. 

“Your name is Kuroo Tetsurou,” he said in a voice so low that Morisuke almost missed it, “and you were imprisoned here because you defended your friend.”

The prisoner’s - Kuroo’s - eyes went wide, his face quietly pale with shock. Morisuke was amazed at how much younger it made him look, more of a boy than a man. Then his forehead hardened and he jerked his face down to his hands, eyes like iron. His knuckles were white where they clenched each other, and his wrists were red from the handcuffs. 

“We know everything about you,” Iwaizumi said, perhaps a little more gently than usual, “there’s nothing to hide. All we’re doing is offering an opportunity.”

“They were trying to hurt him, to cut his hair,” he started slowly, voice quieter and softer than before, “I just wanted to save him.”

“Everyone in the group was brought in,” Oikawa said into the resulting silence, his face no longer predatory and cunning, but more gentle, more alive. This was Oikawa at his best. 

“Their crime coefficients went down. Mine didn’t. That’s all there is.” 

“The system isn’t fair-” Oikawa began.

“Don’t give me that,” Kuroo said, his voice dull. His face was now entirely hidden by his hair and no matter how he shifted, Morisuke couldn’t see his expression. The air felt brittle and cold, even though logically he was aware the temperature hadn’t changed.

Now Oikawa looked shocked, from his stiff posture it was obvious he hadn’t expected the prisoner to talk back. 

“How long have you been here?” Iwaizumi asked, after a few minutes of tense silence.

“I don’t know,” Kuroo finally responded. 

Iwaizumi sighed as if he had known it all along, which he probably had. “I can’t offer you real freedom, and I can’t say if you’ll ever see or hear from your friend again, but I can get you out of this place.”

Kuroo didn’t look up, but his leg stopped moving, and his hands unclenched slightly. 

“My friend here thinks you’d be a good part of the team, and he has pretty decent judgement, so it’s not going to be worse than what you’ve got here.”

“I didn’t know the Public Safety Bureau was into charity,” Kuroo said, without looking up. “Are you guys turning over a new leaf?”

To Morisuke’s surprise, Iwaizumi laughed uproariously at that. Beside him, Oikawa was also smiling. “You got me, now do you want the job or not?”

Kuroo stared at him for a long moment, and Iwaizumi held his gaze. Then the prisoner smiled, a grin surprisingly similar to Oikawa’s, and said, “I’ll take it.”

It took far longer to leave the facility than it had to enter it, and they were asked to stand in the lobby while the Sibyl System processed their paperwork. Their comm clocks had remained dysfunctional throughout the interview, and when Morisuke opened the holo screen it showed him the same error message as it had before. They’d been standing for god knew how long.

Morisuke had never realized how suffocating a place could be, but now that their business in the facility was finished, the fact that he couldn’t leave was beginning to press down on him. 

Oikawa was pacing, his shoes clicking rhythmically on the linoleum floor. The sound clashed off tempo with the beat of Morisuke’s heart, pumping through his ears in the quiet room. 

His bad mood had returned as soon as they’d left the interview room and the enforcer had gone from helpful asset to whiny child in the time it had taken them to get back to the lobby. He’d been searched again on the way out, and was not happy about it. It grated on Morisuke’s already frayed nerves. 

“Couldn’t you have just made him come?” Morisuke asked Iwaizumi, pointedly ignoring Oikawa. “What’s the point in trying to convince him if we could have just saved the time and effort? And we’re not even going to look at the other two?”

Oikawa only gave him a disdainful look.

“Everyone deserves to be treated like a human being,” Iwaizumi said evenly.

“He’s a criminal,” Morisuke protested, “You can’t insist that the whole discussion was necessary and still complain about it. That’s hypocritical.”

“I’m a criminal!” Oikawa snapped. “You’d muscle me around like a bag of grain?”

Morisuke felt a bitter taste in his mouth. “You were an inspector! You are my senior; I have to treat you with respect.”

“So I’m just a different type of criminal from him.” Oikawa spat out the words like poison, like ice. “Just human enough for you to tolerate me.” 

“You’re this way because of the job; he brought this on himself,” Morisuke snapped back, too tired to pull his punches. 

“Enough,” Iwaizumi said tiredly. He was the only one unaffected by their time in the facility, but the bickering was quickly wearing away his ordinarily thin patience. 

Morisuke snapped his mouth shut and turned away. It was a childish move and he knew it, but he didn’t care.

Oikawa, who could not be bound by gods, men, or Iwaizumi, did not. “Do you think any of us wanted this?” He hissed, obviously trying to get a rise out of the younger inspector. 

“Don’t do this again, Oikawa,” Morisuke said, trying unsuccessfully to keep his voice level and calm, “we’re in public.”

Oikawa was about to reply when the computer behind the lobby desk binged. Immediately a man in the white uniform of the facility emerged from a door behind it. “Thank you for your patience,” he told Iwaizumi, who stood to accept his handshake, “Your enforcer will be transported independently to the MWPSB headquarters to ensure public safety.”

“Thank you for accomodating us,” Iwaizumi said, even though the transport was a matter policy rather than convenience. They nodded their goodbyes and Iwaizumi ushered Morisuke and Oikawa out the door. 

The ride back was stony and silent. 

* * *

Once they were out of the country, Morisuke found it was already mid-afternoon.

Iwaizumi must have heard his stomach grumbling, because as soon as they got back to the headquarters, he sent Morisuke and Ushijima to the canteen with the instructions to pick him up something American. Oikawa vanished as soon as they got in the building.

“Did something happen while you were out?” Ushijima asked when they were out of earshot of the office, fixing his perennially intense gaze on Morisuke. 

“Oikawa is in a bad mood,” Morisuke said by way of explanation. 

“Oh,” said Ushijima, turning away, “I noticed.” 

Ushijima didn’t seem to feel the need to ask for more information, for which Morisuke was grateful. He didn’t want to talk. Oikawa’s semi-random moods were nothing new, but the containment facility and the latent criminal they’d met there had thrown Morisuke off in ways he couldn’t really understand. It felt like trying to mentally batter down a wall of smoke; he knew it was there, but he couldn’t really see or feel it. 

Luckily, the canteen was quiet, and he and Ushijima ate in silence. Ushijima always ate with a single minded dedication that unnerved most people who didn’t know him. It was as if he was training for the world championship of eating. Morisuke considered this, trying to focus on the enforcer’s measured bites rather than the day’s events. 

Ushijima cleared up the last of his soup in a couple of quick spoonfuls and said, “you are thinking about the new enforcer.” It was not a question. 

Morisuke didn’t meet Ushijima’s focussed gaze, but instead fixed his eyes on his plate. 

“The Sybil System makes decisions for the greater good of the majority, not individuals,” Ushijima continued, “that is why I cannot argue with it. One man alone cannot see the big picture.” He stood and picked up his tray to leave. 

“Why are you telling me this?” Morisuke asked belatedly.

Ushijima stopped and considered. “You are always trying to fix chaos,” he said finally. “The best way to live is to follow the system.”

Morisuke didn’t understand, but Ushijima walked off before he could ask any more questions. Reluctantly, he finished his own meal, grabbed a burger in a cardboard box for Iwaizumi, and trudged back to their office. 

Inside, only Iwaizumi’s feet were visible, crossed on his desk. The rest of him was laid out flat on his chair, one hand idly cranking a grip strengthener. Morisuke left the hamburger by Iwaizumi’s shoe (the inspector grunted a thank you) before returning to his own desk.

Ushijima and Oikawa’s shifts were over, so the room was empty except for Division 1’s fourth and final enforcer, Sugawara Koushi. He was leaning back in his chair, hands crossed over his stomach and a slightly outdated volleyball supply catalogue (almost certainly Ushijima’s) over his face. He was asleep.

Suga, as he liked to be called, spent very little time sleeping at night, instead preferring to do it during the day. He was the team’s good cop, but despite his misleadingly soft appearance, he possessed an iron will and a mischievous personality. Morisuke let him sleep, there was nothing for any of them to do anyway. 

He thumbed through his messages and assignments. The test analysis for the arsonist case had still not arrived; in its place was a note from Ushijima that read ‘test incomplete, results afternoon’. Morisuke was still struck by a burst of annoyance. He could never understand why the biochemical analysis drone would not send an incomplete report. Occasionally they would wait for days for a completed report, only to find that the missing information had been a small quantity of unidentified substance that was completely unrelated to the case. Once they’d been held up for a week during a murder case because the drones could not identify what turned out to be a piece of chewing gum stuck on the sidewalk near the crime scene. Iwaizumi had written a strongly worded letter to their superiors, but it had changed nothing. 

Morisuke stretched his arms. He cracked his neck. He tapped his legs. He couldn’t sit still, and the office, filled with Suga’s quiet breathing and the creak of Iwaizumi’s grip strengthener, was stiflingly quiet. He spun his chair around and clicked through the unchanged list of assignments. Eventually, he gave up on the dull office and left, heading out the glass doors and deeper into the Ministry of Welfare building. 

His destination was a darkened room lit exclusively by the glow of an array of computer screens. They flickered with incomprehensible graphs, numbers, and lines of code. Morisuke peered through the lurid blue half light. The room’s usual occupant was nowhere to be seen, but that didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t there. 

“Tsukishima?” Morisuke called into the darkness. 

There was a shuffling sound and then an annoyed “what?” from beneath the desk. 

“It’s Yaku,” Morisuke replied.

“I know, what do you want?” Tsukishima emerged from the shadows beneath the desk holding a power cable and a computer fan. His blond hair glowed dimly blue and the same colour reflected off of his square glasses so Morisuke couldn’t really see his expression, but his voice was annoyed. 

“First, do you have the substance analysis report from the arson case-” 

Tsukishima interrupted with an irritated click in the back of his throat. “No. They won’t send it and the last time I requested access it crashed my computer.”

Morisuke bit back the response that Tsukishima should be waiting for the report and that the system probably saw his numerous requests as hacking activity, but that would only make the normally recalcitrant analyst even less cooperative. Instead he continued, “and do you have anything on the new enforcer.”

At this Tsukishima’s face broke into a sarcastic smile, wide enough that Morisuke could see it clearly in the dim light. “You want me to help you spy on the new guy? That’s nasty Yaku-san”

Morisuke ignored him, aware that Tsukishima was fishing for a reaction, not genuinely criticizing him. “Do you or don’t you have anything?”

Tsukishima advanced on him, bending his lanky body down to loom over Morisuke. “You seem really interested in this kid,” he prodded. After a few minutes of silence and the realization that he wasn’t going to get anything from the inspector, he withdrew and wandered over to the bank of computers. He tapped leisurely at his tablets, letting Morisuke know exactly how disinterested he was in the entire situation. 

Eventually, he pulled up a video feed of an undecorated room identical in size and shape to all the other apartments in the MWPSB headquarters. It was one of three rooms that all enforcers were provided with: a kitchen and living area, a bedroom, and a bathroom. Unlike most of the others, this was unpersonalized, its walls dark and bare, floor empty, and furniture the regulation grey of the Public Safety Bureau. 

“He filled out a furniture request,” Tsukishima noted, reading a different screen, “but I guess it’s still getting processed.” 

They both peered around the screen, but could find no sign of Kuroo.

“Where are you?” Tsukishima asked the screen, his interest in the enforcer betrayed by the tapping of his fingers against his tablet. The picture on the screen wobbled a few times and then changed completely as Tsukishima switched camera feeds. The new room was just as empty as the old one. “Oh my,” the analyst said to the screen, his voice coloured with sarcastic humor. “Looks like your man isn’t as brave as he wants us to think.”

The new room was a darkened bathroom, the white toilet and sink visible like ghosts in the dimness, illuminated by two narrow rays from the door. It took Morisuke a moment longer to find Kuroo in the gloom, but eventually he spotted the other man’s hair, looking like an enormous tufty plant in the darkness.

Kuroo was curled in between the toilet and the sink, his pale garments hidden by the shadows around him. Morisuke couldn’t see his face, but it appeared to be pressed between his knees, his hands over his ears, or maybe his head. An incomprehensible emotion grabbed Morisuke’s heart and tugged. 

“I can probably access the audio too if you want,” Tsukishima said, pulling Morisuke out of the darkened room and back into the analyst’s slightly musty office. 

“N-no,” he said, too quickly, “that’s enough.”

“Oh?” Tsukishima said, eyebrows raised, “I thought we could have had some fun.”

“You said yourself it was nasty,” Morisuke countered, his usual venom returning. 

Tsukishima spread his hands, “and when did I tell you I wasn’t?”

“I’ve had enough,” Morisuke said, turning away. 

Behind him, Tsukishima cracked out a fake sounding laugh. “What? Suddenly feelings of pity for the little enforcer have put you off?”

“That’s not what it is and you know it,” Morisuke said, controlling his tone with difficulty. 

Tsukishima stared back at him, expression victorious. “Whatever you need to tell yourself then,” he said mildly, and turned back to his backs of monitors, “I’m going to send another substance analysis request. Tell Iwaizumi-san that it’s coming.”

* * *

 

The report came in the next day. 

“If I printed it out,” Morisuke heard Tsukishima say as he entered the analyst’s office for the briefing, “it would be easily five times the thickness of the tablet, so I’m sending it to you digitally.”

Oikawa paced as they waited for the file to download. 

Iwaizumi scratched his neck, “I guess they really weren’t stalling for once, they just had that much to process.”

The rest of the enforcers were already there, sitting at various intervals on the sofa Tsukishima had been too lazy to remove when he’d inherited the room from the previous analyst. Morisuke’s eyes immediately jumped to Kuroo, who was sandwiched in between Iwaizumi’s easy and relaxed slouch and Ushijima’s ramrod straight posture. The newest enforcer was leaning against the back of the sofa, but his shoulder were tight and his eyes flitted back and forth across the room. He fumbled for a moment before pulling up the holoscreen on his wrist comm. 

Morisuke’s own wrist comm beep as the report came in. Iwaizumi looked up at the noise, and then stood to begin the meeting. Before he said anything, Oikawa appeared behind him, tapping his arm to get his attention and then sending a meaningful glance in Kuroo’s direction. 

“Oh yeah,” Iwaizumi grunted, as if he’d just remembered something, “there’s a new member of the team. This is Kuroo Tetsurou, please make him welcome. Now-” He began moving on. 

“Iwaizumi, you’re too harsh,” Suga interrupted. “You haven’t even introduced us. I’m Suga,” he said to Kuroo, “beside you is Ushijima, but he’s not talkative so don’t try to befriend him.” This dragged a chuckle out of everyone except Ushijima himself. 

“I’m very friendly,” Ushijima said, confused. 

“Our team analyst is Tsukishima,” Suga continued, ignoring the other enforcer, “he’s a passable scientist but a terrible person.”

Tsukishima shot Suga an ugly look, but he only smiled sunnily back. 

“And Yaku is behind you, he’s our second inspector.”

They all craned backwards to look at him and Morisuke felt himself shiver with awkwardness. Kuroo’s eyes were grey in the blue light of the office, and Morisuke realized too late that he was staring. 

“Have we wasted enough time-” Tsukishima faked a cough to cover the words, “finished the introductions yet?”

“You should respect your seniors,” Ushijima cut in.

Tsukishima gave him a withering look, but the enforcer didn’t seem to notice. 

“Anyway,” Iwaizumi interrupted, “to business. Tsukishima, please present your report.”

“I hope you’re sitting comfortably,” the analyst said humorlessly, “because this is going to be very long.

“To begin, the bad news is that none of the remains that the drones found were human. What we thought was a body turned out to be something sculpted out of pork. So we know our guy is smart, and that he planned to fake his death in order to escape.”

“Why use pork?” Oikawa interrupted, “It’s expensive and controlled, so why not just use modified hyper-oats?”

“Pork most closely imitates human flesh, so I guess they wanted to make a realistic corpse,” Tsukishima answered. 

“They’re an oldschooler,” Iwaizumi added, “I’d guess at least late fifties. No one younger than that would remember the time before hyper-oats.”

“They could also be a scientist,” Ushijima pointed out. “Tsukishima knew the pig fact too.”

“You’re both right,” Tsukishima said, typing something into his tablet. The monitors behind him lit up with a list of chemicals. “The perp’s a scientist, but not a biologist; he wouldn’t have know the pig thing. He was a chemist.

“The chemicals you see on the screen are all combustibles, and ingredients in commercial fireworks. So they must have used a whole bunch of stolen fireworks to make a series of improvised bombs, of which, as we know, only one detonated.”

“But even a large quantity of of fireworks wouldn’t have gutted a building,” Morisuke protested. 

“He was using turpentine as an accelerant.”

All the heads in the room turned to Kuroo, who shrank into his black jacket like a tortoise. “There’s pinene more than once on your list of chemicals, and it’s not found in fireworks or in synthetic fuels like gasoline.”

“Definitely an oldie,” Iwaizumi was the first to recover, “I barely know anyone who even remembers what turpentine is.”

“If none of know what it is, then how did they get their hands on it?” Suga mused.

Tsukishima turned back to his monitors and tapped in a search. “Apparently the Ministry of Research is revisiting its usefulness as a solvent.”

“So they were a lower level chemist with access to fireworks and turpentine and enough knowledge to predict that turpentine could be used as an accelerant,” Oikawa mused.

“Couldn’t they still have access to those chemicals?” Morisuke asked, pleased that he’d caught Oikawa’s tense change.

“No,” Iwaizumi responded for the enforcer, “his crime coefficient would be too high to stay employed after that arson.”

Oikawa continued as if he hadn’t heard either of them, “if he faked his death it means they’re planning on escaping, or at least lying low until the coast is clear to make it out of the city.” He paused thoughtfully. “Contact the Ministry of Research and ask if they’ve had any disappearances amongst their elderly employees, especially someone who vanished after a sudden hue change. That’s our suspect.” 

Tsukishima turned back to his computers and began to fill out the request form. 

Iwaizumi took up the thread of conversation smoothly where Oikawa had left off. “In the meantime,” he said, “we plan our next move.

“Once we have a name we can find an address, search the place, and find either the perp or some clue of where they’ve vanished to. We’ll move out as soon as the address comes through.”

“The Ministry of Research has three absences; all of them cite sickness as the reason for missing work,” Tsukishima said from his desk. 

“Bring up the profiles,” Oikawa ordered, “good, now enlarge the second one.” 

Tsukishima complied, even he knew it was wiser to follow Oikawa’s orders when the enforcer was focused like this.

The profile showed an elderly man with thick white hair combed over his head in a style that had been fashionable at least twenty years ago, thick dark eyebrows, and a large nose. He wore a regulation white lab coat and stood with his arms folded neatly behind him.

“Washijou Tanji,” Morisuke read, “assistant to the team’s head researcher. Absent for the last week and a half citing aging and sickness. In the days before his disappearance his hue slid from grass green to olive and he was heard expressing negative opinions of the Sybil System.”

“Bingo,” said Oikawa.

* * *

 

Half an hour later they stood outside an average looking apartment block near the edge of the downtown area and half a mile from the Ministry of Research’s secondary location. The police vehicles, including the paddy wagon and a bomb disposal unit were parked a block away so as not to startle Washijou, if he still happened to be in the building. 

Morisuke sipped his cup of green tea and pretended to read the newspaper on his comm bracelet, keeping the apartment building and the three figures currently entering it visible from the corner of his eye. To a normal passerby they probably looked like businessmen or bankers on a courtesy lunch break call, but the trained eye could pick out the occasional geometrical lump beneath their clothes. A small drone followed them. It was painted exactly like a market drone, meant to keep track of stocks and pricings at all times, but what significantly larger than most models. 

Morisuke flipped his digital page as Iwaizumi, Oikawa, and Ushijima entered the building. Across from him, Kuroo fidgeted with his shoelaces, eyes hidden behind dark shades. They had been assigned to stake out the block while the others carried out the raid. Suga was across the street on a park bench, cooing at children and pretending to wait for a date while he watched their blind spots. 

The memory of the new enforcer crouched between the toilet and lamp of a dim bathroom crowded into Morisuke’s mind, and he pushed it aside. The image of Kuroo grin in the interrogation room crowded in behind it, followed by how good the enforcer looked in mirrored black sunglasses. Morisuke shook his head to clear it.

“Something in the news?” Kuroo asked easily. Now that Morisuke was looking straight at him he noticed that the other man’s eyes darted back and forth, looking at a thousand points in the room. Beneath the table his leg bounced, and when he went to pick up his own cup, the surface was marred with ripples and liquid lapped dangerously close to the rim. The enforcer’s words may have been relaxed, but his body was not.

“Apparently more and more people are disobeying the scanners and running off,” Morisuke replied.

Kuroo seemed to buy it. “I can’t blame them; therapy isn’t really fun.” 

“I wouldn’t know,” Morisuke said thinly, annoyance curling within him. Couldn’t this guy see that the scanners were for the people’s own good and getting help early what the key to mental treatment? “Chasing them down just makes more paperwork for us anyway.”

“I guess that’s true,” Kuroo replied, eyes narrowing. 

They sat in stony silence as Morisuke tried to reconcile the enforcer’s previous actions with his obvious antagonization of the Sybil System. Or at least Morisuke sat in the stoniest silence he could muster. The short conversation seemed to have relieved some of the enforcer’s nerves and he regarded their surroundings more slowly, a crooked smile on his face.

“I forgot how nice outdoor cafes were,” he commented. 

Morisuke grunted, trying to figure out if the guy was trying to annoy him or if he was just always like this. He couldn’t believe that just moments before he’d been sympathizing with the guy.

Their comm bracelets dinged, a message from Iwaizumi. 

“That’s our cue to leave,” Morisuke said, standing up and striding off before Kuroo had a chance to reply.

The enforcer caught up to him in no time, a grin on his face. “Inspector, are you trying to abandon me?”

Suddenly Morisuke felt like punching him.

“I mean, you were almost running to get away from me,” Kuroo continued, “am I really that bad?”

“If this is gonna become a short joke,” Morisuke gritted out, “save yourself the pain and  _ don’t _ .”

“Your moods really do change quickly,” Kuroo said, a cunning glint in his eye. 

“So?”

“I guess we’re just fundamentally different then.”

“Are you smirking at me?” Morisuke asked as they rounded the corner. He wouldn’t admit it but he was having trouble keeping up with Kuroo’s long steps. “Because just a minute ago, you were a nervous wreck.” A look of surprise crossed the enforcer’s face and vanished just as quickly. “Yeah don’t think I didn’t notice that. I earned my position here.” 

“A little conversation can be soothing,” Kuroo said, “and I must have underestimated you.”

Morisuke felt his face heating up as he tried to sputter out a reply. The nerve of it, that an enforcer who they’d only just effectively rescued from life in a prison, his junior officer would form a low opinion of him. 

“Don’t try to rile Yaku. It doesn’t usually end well for most people.” Suga’s arrival saved Kuroo from any further, likely physical, attack. Morisuke was proud of the fact that he only punched people who deserved it. It wasn’t his fault that most people happened to fit that description. 

Iwaizumi and the other enforcers joined them a minute later, the bomb disposal drone following loyally behind them. Ushijima and Iwaizumi looked as usual, but Oikawa’s hands were resting behind his head as he hummed a distracted little tune. They hadn’t found anything. 

* * *

Back at the PSB headquarters, Iwaizumi debriefed them. “The apartment was empty, no sign of where he would have gone next. He took a winter jacket and a few clothes, so we know he’s planned ahead and isn’t just running himself into the ground. Tsukishima is hacking and downloading the memory of his holo servant so hopefully we can find out what he was up to before he left. Other that that, there was nothing out of the ordinary about the apartment, and no sign of how he made the bombs.”

The rest of the day passed uneventfully. Iwaizumi and Oikawa responded to an elevated stress warning at a mall. Ushijima finished another volleyball magazine. Suga helped Kuroo struggle his way through writing his first report. Morisuke counted the minutes away with the turning of fan blades in the dusty air. 

Tsukishima tracked Morisuke down late in the afternoon, as he was leaving the Public Safety Bureau. “I dug up some more dirt on your enforcer, if you’re interested.” 

“First off,” Morisuke snapped grumpily, “he’s not  _ my  _ enforcer. Where did you even get that idea?” 

“Ohhhh someone’s grumpy,” Tsukishima said, unintimidated. “You seemed really into him yesterday.”

“ _ What? _ ” Morisuke spat.

Tsukishima put his hands up, smug grin still covering his face. “I guess if you’re not interested, I’ll just let it slide. Or maybe I’ll tell Suga; he loves some good gossip.”

Morisuke mentally kicked himself for ever deciding to work with Tsukishima. “Fine, what is it?” 

“Please, step into my office,” Tsukishima said with fake politesse, holding the door open for Morisuke. “Your man is doing the same thing as last night,” he wound past the inspector to tap at his keyboards.

“I don’t want to see it,” Morisuke said, more quickly than he intended, Kuroo in the darkened bathroom flashing past his mind’s eye. Then to cover his hastiness, “and stop calling him ‘my man’ you know it’s not true.”

“You like it,” Tsukishima mumbled. His back was to Morisuke, for which the inspector was grateful, because if Tsukishima saw his red face, he would never hear the end of it.

“Why are you doing this?” He asked, trying to distract from the previous topic of conversation. “I thought you said I was no fun yesterday.”

“And yet you’re still here,” Tsukishima said, turning to gaze a Morisuke for a moment, “having fun.”

Morisuke told himself that punching Tsukishima would achieve nothing but fleeting satisfaction.

“I have a theory,” Tsukishima continued, his shit-eating grin reflected in the many screens, “about why you’re so angry all the time. You hate chaos; you see it all around you and you hate it, that’s why you’re here.”

Morisuke was uncertain whether to be angry or not. On the one hand, the observation was correct, but on the other, he had no idea where Tsukishima was going with it but he was certain he wouldn’t like it.

“You hate it, but you get off on it.” 

He settled on anger. “Hey-”

Tsukishima cut him off, “Suga and Oikawa agree with me on this. The thing Yaku like most of all is putting things right.”

Morisuke was almost spitting with rage at this point. He aimed a punch at Tsukishima’s face. The analyst ducked out of the way at the last minute. 

“You’re not fooling anyone,” he said, “you have a type.” Tsukishima was about to continue when a knock sounded from the door.

“You should really stop tormenting people,” Suga said calmly, letting himself in. 

“You’ve been listening this entire time,” Morisuke accused. He’d been seeing red for some time now.

“And you should stop snapping at people,” Suga chided, his tone unchanging. 

Morisuke registered the electrical hum of the computers for the first time as he began to calm down.

Tsukishima began to protest, but Suga stared at him, and he seemed to decide it was best to remain silent. 

“While I agree with Tsukishima,” Suga began, “that this tendency is something you should know about, I don’t think this was the best way to deliver it.”

Tsukishima had the sense to look sheepish. 

Morisuke took a moment to think before he spoke, that sort of thing was always easier when Suga was around to remind him. “What are you two plotting?”

Suga shrugged, “we’re helping you along to some self-realization.” 

Morisuke was not certain if he believed that. He rounded on Tsukishima, “since when did you care about my wellbeing?”

“Suga asked me to help, so I did,” he responded petulantly, already distancing himself from the conversation. 

Suga also seemed to sense that they would get nothing more done. “It’s been a long day. Perhaps we should all get some rest.”

Morisuke knew he should press further, but he was tired, and he couldn’t resist the temptation to get home as soon as possible. He took the bait. 

He spent a good part of that evening trying to figure out what Suga’s motive had been in telling him all that. He was aware on some level that he was avoiding applying it to the situation with Kuroo. Which was probably what Suga wanted and the key to solving the whole mystery, but his stubbornness prevented him from considering it. He was willing to run in circles for a little longer if it meant the petty satisfaction of refusing Suga’s guidance.

* * *

 

At around 10:45 the evening, Morisuke’s comm bracelet began to beep frantically in the unique tune of an emergency summons. He rolled out of bed, feeling his pulse accelerate momentarily and opened the comm. The bluish screen lit the darkened room, Oikawa’s face appearing in it after a second of static.

“Yaku-kun,” Oikawa said, his voice barely audible behind the low grumble of an engine. Lights flashed past behind him; he must have been in a moving car, Iwaizumi driving. “We need you out here, as soon as possible.”

“Warehouse Seven, at the agriculture wharf,” Iwaizumi’s voice cut in from somewhere off screen.

They both sounded grim, especially Oikawa, whose tone was usually light hearted and playful. This was big. 

“Is it a lead on the arson case,” Morisuke asked, brushing away the holo servant and grabbing his PSB jacket. He elbowed the door open and hunched his shoulders in against the windy night. A couple of raindrops blew into his face.

“Yes,” Oikawa said, but before Morisuke could ask anything more, he closed the call. Swearing quietly, Morisuke attempted to reconnect, but the comm rang several times with no answer. He set off towards the harbour. 

Warehouse Seven was a hulking black silhouette against the glittering night skyline of the city. Before it, Public Safety Bureau drones crowded, ushering back a couple of curious onlookers. Morisuke help out his digital ID and one of the cartoonish holos scanned it, then moved aside to let him enter.

Iwaizumi was standing under a brightly lit tent, his car parked nearby and Oikawa pacing behind him. He was studying a memo on his comm as Morisuke approached. 

“Drones picked up a single elevated crime coefficient from inside the building,” Iwaizumi told Morisuke without looking up, “we’re assuming that it belongs to the arsonist, and this is their next hit. They’ve somehow jammed the wireless signal within the building, so none of the drones can get in.”

“I sense a trap,” Oikawa interrupted. “All the previous hits have been heavily populated slum apartments, so why are they now choosing an isolated warehouse? And why go to all the trouble to get us inside?”

“Any damage to the wharf would disrupt food distribution,” Morisuke added thoughtfully. “Perhaps that’s the motive.”

Iwaizumi shook his head, “according to the Sybil, this particular place was used when we still traded internationally. Now that Japan is self-sustaining, it’s no longer used.”

“It’s definitely a trap,” Oikawa said, his shoes splashing gently in the growing puddles outside the tent.

Morisuke reluctantly nodded in agreement.

Before he could say anything more, the paddy wagon pulled into the lot and opened, releasing the other three enforcers and the crate of dominators with irritating slowness. 

Ushijima strode out before the doors had fully finished opening, face stern and determined. Sugawara was hot on his heels, hopping delicately around puddles and brushing raindrops out of his hair and shooting a sunny smile around the group. Morisuke felt a bundle of stress he hadn’t previously noticed unwind in his back. Suga had that sort of effect on people. The last person to exit was Kuroo, a few steps back from the last two. 

“He’s trying to pretend he’s not nervous,” Suga whispered to Morisuke. 

“And you ratted on him?” Morisuke muttered back, with humor, “Suga you’re the worst.” The enforcer shrugged playfully and turned away.

Iwaizumi cleared his throat, regaining everyone’s attention. “I trust you’ve read the case briefing on the way here,” He said, mostly to Kuroo. 

“Of course,” Ushijima responded, and Suga nodded along side him. “Our conclusion is that the arsonist is trying to draw us into the building.” 

“Good,” Iwaizumi replied, “we have a consensus. I will take Suga and Oikawa and attempt to detain the perp. Yaku, you take Ushijma and Kuroo and shut off whatever device they’re using to jam the wireless signal. Once you do that, Tsukishima will send in the drones to help us capture the perp.” 

Iwaizumi’s comm burst to life and Tsukishima appeared on the screen. “About that,” he said, “the communicators are going to be busted too, so you’ll need short range radios to communicate with each other, they should be with the dominators.”

Ushijima rifled through the trunk’s many compartments and pulled out a bag of electronics, holding them before the comm’s holo screen.

“Yeah those,” Tsukishima said briefly, “You won’t be able to contact me unless you’re outside the building.”

“What about the dominators?” Morisuke asked. “They operate by communicating with the Sybil System, same as the drones do.”

Tsukishima shrugged. “For some reason, dominators still work in there. He’s probably jamming the receivers on the drones and wrist comms specifically, rather than the whole system.” 

“This sounds like a trap,” Kuroo said, “Why would he remember the drones and wrist comms, but not the dominators? Surely those are more dangerous.”

“Most people don’t know how dominators work,” Iwaizumi told him, “they’re much more familiar with comms and drones because they see them every day. He probably assumed that the dominators don’t need a wireless connection at all.”

“It’s a trap,” Kuroo said again. 

“Trap or not, we need to go in,” Iwaizumi turned back to Tsukishima, “Are you sure you’ll be able to send in the drones as soon as the jammer is deactivated?” 

“Please,” Tsukishima said, expression twisting into his familiar sarcastic smile, “who do you think I am?” 

“Good to know you’re on top of it,” Iwaizumi replied with his own grin. He and Tsukishima were unlikely friends, mostly, Morisuke thought, because Iwaizumi let the analyst do whatever he wanted, so long as it didn’t interfere with the case.

The trunk behind them unlocked itself and proffered the dominators to them. Morisuke grabbed his, the banal start up track running through his head. After it had finished, and he had tucked the weapon into his belt, he felt a hand on his arm. It was Iwaizumi, quietly drawing him aside. 

“Kuroo,” Iwaizumi said without preface, indicating the newest enforcer, who was holding his weapon gingerly away from him and half listening to Suga and Oikawa’s chatter, “doesn’t have an active dominator.”

Morisuke was stunned for a moment. They were sending a complete rookie in with nothing to defend himself at all? The perp was dangerous; he’d already taken down one experienced enforcer, so shouldn’t the kid get something?

“Hear me out,” Iwaizumi said, seeing the expression on Morisuke’s face, “all we really know about the guy is that he’s protective of his friends and resentful of the Sybil System. Even if he’s agreed to work with us, we need to know he’ll actually do it.”

“What about Oikawa?” Morisuke asked, surely he’d object to this treatment of their own enforcers.

“Oikawa agrees with me,” Iwaizumi replied, “we do this with every new recruit. Keep him close, let Ushijima protect the both of you. We don’t want to find out he’ll try to shoot you or the other enforcer’s when it’s too late to stop him.” With that, he dropped Morisuke’s arm and wove back into small group of enforcers, Morisuke reluctantly trailing behind him. 

Kuroo was looking vaguely uncomfortable, his shoulders rolled in and looking small in his new jacket. It smelt of plastic and fake leather, the shoulders damp with rain. They hadn’t really spoken since their argument, or well, Morisuke’s argument, a day earlier, but Morisuke felt himself thinking about the enforcer uncomfortably often. He told himself it was because Kuroo was a rookie and the only new member of the team, but that excuse what beginning to sound more and more hollow. 

Ushijima gave Morisuke a look, and it took him a moment to figure out that the enforcer was waiting for his orders. “Ushijima, you lead and cover us. I’ll go in second, and Kuroo will bring up the rear.”

“The jammer will be somewhere near the center of the building,” Tsukishima said from behind him, startling Morisuke. 

“We should approach from the opposite end of the building, and after Iwaizumi,” Ushijima said, totally unruffled, “Washijou will probably be protecting it. Our task will be more efficient if we let Iwaizumi draw him off before we begin.”

Morisuke nodded in agreement, and they slipped in the main door after Iwaizumi’s team. 

After letting his eye adjust to the darkness within the warehouse, Morisuke realized it wasn’t entirely black. Instead, the floors were lit with a low, greenish coloured light. It danced and flickered across Ushijima’s shoes as he lead them around the first corner. 

The warehouse was filled with metal crates, stacked to the roof with narrow passages snaking between them like an enormous maze. Morisuke tapped one experimentally and it responded with a hollow clang. They were empty. 

As they rounded the first corner, Ushijima scanning back and forwards with his dominator before ushering them forwards, Morisuke noticed the source of the strange light. It was a small glass dish, only about the size of Morisuke’s palm, placed on the floor and filled with a power that burned with a sickly green light. It illuminated the ground around their ankles, but left anything above that in shadow.

“Copper powder,” Kuroo whispered behind him, making Morisuke shiver. 

His radio earpiece crackled, and Suga’s voice sounded in it, distorted by static, “He knew we’d come.”

“I thought he was trying to make a clean getaway,” Kuroo said. Morisuke heard it double, both from his earpiece and from Kuroo himself. 

“We should be prepared for the worst,” Iwaizumi said.

They kept moving forwards, making only right turns to stay along the perimeter of the building. Morisuke felt the silence pressing in on his ears. The shuffle of his feet against the dirt floor sounded impossibly loud. Drops of rain hit the corrugated steel roof like shots. He could hear Kuroo’s breathing, fast and hard, behind him. He felt his vision tunnel until he was only focussed on Ushijima’s back in front of him and the sounds that surrounded him.

As they ventured farther into the building, the colour of the light changed moving from the bluish green of copper to a brighter green, then yellow, orange, and finally red. 

Kuroo listed off the different chemicals as they passed the coloured flames. “Barium. Calcium. Sodium. Strontium.”

“Where’s he getting all these chemicals?” Suga asked, his voice less crackly this time. They were getting close. 

“They’re elements,” Kuroo replied, “and they don’t need to be particularly pure to produce the coloured flames.” Morisuke couldn’t help but noticing that his voice was a little higher than usual. 

“Stay on guard,” Iwaizumi said, “he could have more dangerous chemicals on him.”

They continued to creep forwards. Morisuke’s initial adrenaline driven focus faded, and he was left feeling slightly absent as he followed Ushijima, his mind wandering. 

At their feet, the flames turned pink.

“Potassium,” Kuroo hissed, the words barely more than a puff of breath. 

Ushijima motioned for them to halt. He indicated his ear. 

Morisuke closed his eyes to concentrate on listening. Past the plops of rain on the roof, he heard the familiar hum of machinery. It was quiet, more like a computer processor than a motor. On top of that, the glug of liquid being poured. 

Ushijima motioned them forwards around another turn, holding his dominator up near his face, its blue light illuminating his harsh features. A faint bluish glow fell on the edges of the boxes at the end of the corridor. 

Morisuke felt his pulse accelerate. They were close. Very close. 

They were at the corner. 

“Lead.” Kuroo pointed. A dish of power burned on the floor. The flame was eerie bluish white. 

Over the radio, Iwaizumi began a countdown. His voice was very clear. 

“On three. One. Two. Three.” 

Ushijima swung around the corner, dominator out. Morisuke fitted his under Ushijima’s elbow. 

“Crime coefficient 276. This is a target for enforcement action. Trigger unlocked.”

“Get away from me,” the man yelled. 

At the same time Iwaizumi shouted, “drop the bottle.” 

“If you shoot I’ll mix these two chemicals, and they’ll explode with enough force to kill all of us,” Washijou’s voice was wavering and afraid. When Morisuke peered around Ushijima’s arm, he could see that the man was shaking like a leaf. His hair was blackened and partially burned off, his hands were gnarled fists, and his eyes were glassy. The man standing before them was only a shadow of the one in the photo they’d seen.

Iwaizumi lowered his dominator and indicated that the rest of them should do the same. They pointed the dominators safely at the ground as they edged into open space at the center of the warehouse. 

“Stay were I can see you,” Washijou yelled, high pitched and panicked, “or else.”

Oikawa stopped trying to creep around into the criminal’s blind spot. 

Behind Washijou stood a white box about the size of a chair. It was emitting the low humming sound that they’d heard in the corridor. The jammer. 

“Put the bottle down,” Iwaizumi said again, more calmly. 

“You stand only to gain by surrendering yourself peacefully,” Oikawa added. “It’s not too late for therapy and rehabilitation-”

“That’s a lie and you know it,” Washijou screamed hysterically, “the System doesn’t want to help us. It’s trying to kill us.

Morisuke felt as if his ribcage was far too small. His heart beat wildly beneath it. Anger and disgust tasted sour in his stomach. This is wrong. This is wrong. This is wrong. This man has damaged property and killed people. He is wrong.

“Don’t you understand? No one profits here. It took me far too long to realize it, but the Sybil has made us into slaves. It’s stolen our hopes and dreams from us. Now we just trudge through meaningless lives like zombies,” Washijou’s eyes were misty and it was unclear he remembered they were there. “I can make us free. I’ve already proved I still have my own free will. I can do anything. Life or death, I’ve been fooled into thinking I had no control of it, but now,” he let a drop of liquid fall into the bottle, where it fizzed lightly. Everyone tensed.

“He’s bluffing,” Kuroo murmured into the headset, “that won’t explode with enough power to kill us.”

“Come with us,” Iwaizumi tried again, “We can help you-”

“No,” Washijou’s head snapped up and twisted around frantically, gawking at them as if he’d only just realized they were there, “that’s the system whispering in your ear- Kuroo?” He interrupted himself, bulging eyes fixed on Kuroo, “is that you? My student?”

Kuroo didn’t move, eyes wide in shock.

“My student! You know why you’re here. They told you you’re a monster. You did nothing wrong and they told you you’re a monster. Unfit for society.” Washijou was rambling, swinging the bottle around to punctuate his thoughts, the liquid inside sloshing wildly. “You too are the master of life and death Kuroo, you can be free.”  

Morisuke felt his gaze slide to Kuroo. Please don’t agree with him, he wished at the enforcer, please stay with us.

Kuroo backed up towards the box walls, shaking his head. “I can’t…” he said, trailing off into nothing. 

“But you can,” Washijou said, following him back, not noticing Oikawa had taken advantage of the distraction to train his dominator on Washijou’s back. 

“I did nothing wrong,” Kuroo said, quietly, “I know I only protected my friend.”

Washijou smiled encouragingly, the expression twisting his face into a gargoyle smirk.

“But,” Kuroo’s voice was stronger, he pushed off from the wall, “you’re wrong. We’re different. You killed people. I won’t do that, I can’t- I won’t give up this chance.” He yelled the last phrase hauling his dominator up and pulling the trigger in Washijou’s face. 

Nothing happened.

Washijou threw the bottle to the ground.

Plastic hit dirt with a wet thud.

There was a moment of silence. 

Morisuke saw a plastic drinks bottle roll across the floor. It was swollen, straining at the plastic label. Yellow clouds swirled inside. 

“Everyone get down,” Iwaizumi yelled. 

The bottle exploded. 

Pale yellow smoke crawled across the floor. The lights went out. 

“ _ Climb! _ ” Kuroo shouted from somewhere behind Morisuke.

Scratching sounds and metallic clangs sounded all around him. The smell of bleach burned his nose and he could feel his eyes watering. A hand reached down from above him and grabbed his collar, hauling him upwards. He scrambled after it onto a ledge.

Morisuke’s wrist comm fizzled suddenly to life. “I’m sending in the drones.” Tsukishima’s face in the screen was blurry. Morisuke couldn’t tell whether or not it was because of his streaming eyes. There was another square holo below him. 

_ Kuroo. _

Morisuke didn’t think. He reached down, snagged something like fabric, and heaved. 

A hand reached down past him. Ushijima. It grabbed Kuroo and pulled him up, much more effectively. 

The air was a mess of sound. Another explosion. The blast of a dominator. Drones buzzing. Yelling. 

Morisuke closed his eyes, blinking rapidly to clear them. Once they’d stopped stinging quite so badly, he opened them to find the room packed with flashing drones. 

They were crowded around a small figure lying face up on the floor, his white hair, wrinkled face, and enormous nose painted red with the drone’s lights. One half of the white box blackened and dislodged with the force of the explosions. Across the open space, Iwaizumi, Suga, and Oikawa clung to the edges of the metal boxes, several meters above the ground. Oikawa’s dominator was still in his hand. 

Kuroo was clinging to the edge of the ledge, knuckles white. Morisuke grabbed his jacket and hauled him the rest of the way up without really thinking. 

“Goddamn,” said Iwaizumi. 

Morisuke had never been more glad to feel rain on his face than when they finally left the warehouse. Flashing vehicles crowded around and he wound his way through them to the cool blue of the harbour. It reflected the city behind him in slivers of light, dancing away into nothingness. 

Kuroo was already there, arms wrapped around his knees staring into the water. Morisuke sat down next to him. They didn’t speak. The rain had stopped, and instead a cool breeze brought the fresh scent of petrichor and wet asphalt. 

“Washijou knew you,” Morisuke said as they both watched a tanker cross in front of them, a patch of black against city lights. 

“Did Iwaizumi tell you to do this?” Kuroo asked evasively, pressing his cheek to his knee and drawing into a tighter ball. His black hair hid his expression. 

Morisuke shut down the curl of annoyance rising within his chest, remembering Kuroo raising the dominator, Kuroo pulling the trigger. “You can trust me,” he said, “We’re on the same team.”

Kuroo muttered something inaudible in reply, and then seemed to realize that his words had been muffled by his legs. “Before I was,” he paused awkwardly, “arrested, he was my teacher. I had just began my thesis project, and he’d offered to supervise it. I was going to be a researcher.”

Morisuke watched the tanker pull into a wharf further down the harbour. He bit his tongue. He could almost hear Suga telling him to give Kuroo space to speak. But it was hard; Morisuke had never been either patient or silent. 

“I wanted to make the world a better place,” Kuroo said. He exhaled, all at once, and the next breath he took was a wet sob. 

Morisuke shuffled, trying to figure out what to do. He had never been particularly gentle either. Not knowing what else to do, he fished out a handkerchief and passed it to Kuroo. 

They sat in silence. Morisuke reached over and awkwardly stroked Kuroo’s arm. Eventually the snivelling beside him stopped. A car screamed by behind them, its tires squealing on the asphalt. 

“I was afraid,” Kuroo said, breaking the silence, his voice still thick and choked, “I was more afraid back there than I’ve ever been before.”

Morisuke nodded. 

“Is this what you do every day?” Kuroo asked. It was hard to tell whether or not it was a rhetorical question.

Morisuke nodded.

“You’re braver than I thought.”

* * *

 

“The autopsy reports show the guy died of chlorine poisoning from his own bomb,” Suga told Morisuke the next day. 

It was morning in the Public Safety Bureau and everyone was on duty to write their reports of the crime scene. Iwaizumi was still half asleep behind his desk, communicating only in grunts, and enormous coffee clenched in one hand. 

Kuroo was fidgeting behind his plain desk. “You guys sure get back to normal quickly,” he said picking at a loose thread in his sleeve, “am I the only one totally freaked out by what happened last night? Or that some dude just died right in front of us?”

“You get used to it,” Suga said kindly, “for us, that was just another day at work.”

“You’re exaggerating Suga,” Ushijima cut in, he turned to Kuroo, “normally we don’t see this type of chemical warfare.”

“Speaking of which,” Suga said brightly, as if he’d been waiting for the subject to rise, “how did you know to climb when Iwaizumi said ‘get down’? You saved our lives back there.”

Kuroo blushed and scratched the back of his neck. “I just recognized the smell,” he said, “I could smell alcohol and bleach as we approached, and when you put those together you make a chlorine bomb.”

“I’m not familiar,” Ushijma began, leaving the sentence hanging.

Kuroo blinked at him for a moment before figuring out what he was asking and replying, “it’s a reaction that creates chlorine gas. The gas expands violently enough to cause an explosion, and it nasty poisonous.”

“As we’ve seen,” Oikawa said, glancing at the autopsy report. 

“That’s amazing,” Suga said enthusiastically.

“What?” Kuroo asked, “it’s just chemistry.”

“No, you figured it out so quickly!”

Kuroo went even redder. 

“Suga you’re embarrassing him,” Oikawa said, “and besides, do you really think I’d pick someone who couldn’t keep up with the team.”

“Stop trying to take credit for this Oikawa,” Iwaizumi grumbled. 

Morisuke smiled and thought about how much younger Kuroo looked when he was embarrassed and the harsher angles of his face had smoothed themselves out.

“Hey, um I just wanted to thank you,” Kuroo told Morisuke much later, when the rest of the division had left to get lunch.

“For what?” Morisuke responded, confused.

“You saved my life back there,” Kuroo said, “if you hadn’t pulled me up, I would have died the same way as that old man.”

Morisuke felt his own face reddening. “That was mostly Ushijima; I’m not strong enough to-”

“But you tried,” Kuroo interrupted, “I might have dragged you back down with me and killed us both, but you still tried. I didn’t expect anyone to sacrifice themselves for a latent criminal,” the words were barely coloured by bitterness, but Morisuke could tell he meant them nonetheless, “but you did.”

Morisuke was speechless. He cast around for something equally meaningful to say but ended up only gaping like a stranded fish. Eventually he managed, “I was just protecting my team.” 

Kuroo smiled, and his face lit up. Morisuke found himself grinning back.

**Author's Note:**

> Again, DO NOT mix bleach with vinegar or any type of alcohol; you will create toxic chloroform or chlorine gas (respectively). It they're mixed in a closed container, it will explode. 
> 
> Tell me what you thought in the comments! I see them and love them even if it sometimes takes me a while to reply :)
> 
> All the enforcers + Iwaizumi have their own backstories that I couldn't work into the fic. If you guys are interested in knowing more, shoot me a message on my [blog](http://h0pe-y.tumblr.com/). I'd love to discuss it and if y'all are interested I might write a little more.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


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